


The Man in Black

by Mortissimo



Series: And the World Will Live as One [3]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Episode: s04e20 The Last Man, Implied/Referenced Character Death, It's been 48000 years, M/M, Original Character(s), Other, Other Ships Not Mentioned in Tags, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-05 21:27:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17926661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mortissimo/pseuds/Mortissimo
Summary: John Sheppard steps through the stargate and into a distant, dusty future, where the last man on Atlantis is one of the last people John would have expected.





	The Man in Black

**Author's Note:**

> More on character death at the endnotes, if you want to know.

         “We're going to figure this out, Major.” John glanced back over his shoulder at Major Lorne, who nodded and flashed a brief smile in response.

         “Yes, sir.” That reports of a Lantean captive in Michael's company had kept coming in after the swap of whatsisname for Teyla had been weird enough. What they had found on M8G-352 was enough to keep John up at night. The spartan cell, clearly outfitted for a human prisoner, with Beckett's old IDC carved into the bedframe and strands of Beckett's hair on the pillow. None of it made any sense. At least Michael seemed distracted enough with his new buddy that he didn't seem to mind, or at least retaliate, when Atlantis messed with his stuff.

         Schuyler, John remembered, that was the wraith's name.

        Then he stepped through the stargate and abruptly lost his train of thought, because what he was seeing here didn't make any sense either.

         The gate room looked much like it had the first time John had seen it, dark and abandoned, but as he stepped forward warily and the gate closed behind him, some key differences jumped out at him. Obviously, there were no other new arrivals following him, but there were none of the old withered plants in pots either, so at least John could be glad the gate hasn't sent him back in time or anything. Then there was the oppressive heat and the dull orange light, immediately sticking his shirt to his shoulder blades and raising the hairs at the back of his neck.

         “Somebody turn up the heat?” John wondered aloud, adjusting his grip on his P90 as it began to slip.

         “Hello?” He asked the empty room and stepped forward to see if he could figure out what was going on, only to freeze in his tracks as the stairs under his feet lit their way up to what used to be the control center. Distant mechanisms whirred to life as well, giving the air in the room a much-needed stir. The rest of the room’s lights rose to take the orange edge off, and illuminate the rest of the weird crap that had been done to it.

         “If this is a surprise party,”John muttered dubiously, “it's not my birthday.” The DHD at the top of the stairs was pretty much the only thing left in the control center that John recognized. The rest of the stations had been replaced with sleek pedestals, apparently featureless until John neared them and bright but tasteful pictographs appeared in the air above. When he tried activating one, he was surprised to find the floating icon felt solid, but all that happened was a soft buzz before the icons all went gray and disappeared.

         John had his hand halfway to his earpiece when he heard a noise, and turned toward Carter's office. The door was shut, and the windows had some kind of tint on them now, but John could hear a faint chiming coming from inside. There was a faint green glow too, barely visible through the dark glass.

         P90 lowered but at the ready, John palmed open the door. The room inside was dark, dominated by what looked like a large, featureless refrigerator with rounded corners. The chiming seemed to be linked to a display floating in the air above the surface of the thing. With each chime, a section of a gray circle filled in green until, as John slowly brought his weapon up to bear on the device, the last section colored green and a seam of light appeared between the two halves.

         As the halves swung open, John braced himself for a number of familiar faces, but one he wasn't expecting was the starburst-patterned face of his dear frienemy Todd.

         “Hey Todd.” John smiled grimly down the length of the barrel. “How's it going? Mind explaining what the hell all this is?” Disoriented, Todd blinked a few times until his eyes finally focused on John's face.

         “John,” he sighed, and grinned with delight as though he was greeting an old friend. “It has been _so very long_ since I last heard your voice.”

         “Wish I could say the same,” John snapped, unnerved by the sheer warmth in Todd's eyes. “I'm gonna ask just one more time, and then I'm gonna start shooting: What happened?”

         “That is a very long story.” Todd made to step out of the pod, stopping short as John stepped back and adjusted his grip on his P90.

         “Give me the Cliff's Notes.” John paused. “The–”

         “The short version, yes.” Todd chuckled, delighted for no immediately apparent reason. “I have missed you a great deal. Very well, the short version is that the path of your last journey through the ring crossed through a solar flare, and you are now approximately fifty thousand years later than you ought to be.”

        John stared.

        “Sorry,” he said at length, “are you telling me I _time traveled_? Is this some kind of inter-species practical joke? Is it Wraith April Fool's?”

        “I am afraid not, Sheppard. If you allow me to exit, I can show you more.” Slowly, John lowered his gun, and Todd stepped out of the pod. He did look older, in a way John didn't think wraith ever did. Sometime in the last fifty millennia it looked like Todd finally had a chance to comb his hair out, and it hung down his back in a braid as long as Schuyler's or longer. His clothes didn't seem notably wraith or Earthly, but something that could as easily pass for either as neither. Todd swept past John, through the control room and out the back door onto the balcony. Behind him, John stopped dead in his tracks and, for the first time since he'd stepped through the gate, let his trigger finger relax and his hand fall to his side.

        The sky outside was filtered through the crackling energy of the city's shield, pulled in tight enough around the control tower that Todd probably could have stretched out a hand and touched it. Beyond the shield lay a horizon of sand, blending almost seamlessly into the orange sky above. As he stepped out into the desert air, John could see the rest of the city half-buried in the desert, with no trace of water or green as far as the eye could see.

         “What happened here?” He asked again, this time quiet with shock.

         “Time,” Todd answered with a shrug. “The sun is expanding, and will claim this planet as it has already claimed the oceans.”

         “And that's it?” Irrational or not, John could feel himself bristling like a cat. He turned on his heel and strode back into the gate room, having more than enough of the sandy hellhole his home had been reduced to. “'Welcome to the future, John, time to burn to death with a _wraith_?’ What the hell kind of a future is that?”

         “Please forgive me.” Todd held up a hand to calm John as the balcony door slid shut behind, blocking out the sight and heat of the wasteland outside. There was something wrong with that picture, but John couldn't put a finger on it. “I can send you back with perhaps a month's margin of error. I should have begun with that. The sun will overtake this planet many, many thousands of years after you have returned.”

         “Well.” John hesitated in the receding tide of his anger, not wanting to apologize for his really very reasonable outburst. “Why didn't you say so?”

        Todd smiled and said nothing, approaching one of the pillars next to the DHD. Whatever icons he touched seemed to be the right ones, as they chimed and opened up into a 3D display, showing an angry red orb beside a smaller blue dot, bracketed by scrolling numbers and pictographs. John circled around to the other side and watched Todd's expression change through the loop of the display's little solar flare. It wasn't a good change.

        “Something wrong?” He asked, not especially excited for the answer.

         “You are early.” Todd gestured at a block of numbers. “The next solar flare isn't for eight hundred years.” In spite of the looming sun, John felt his blood go cold. He still couldn't figure out what seemed off about Todd.

         “So, what, burning to death is back on the table?” Todd shook his head.

         “No. You will still get home. I will set the pod to awaken you in time. It should last.”

         “Good,” John drawled slowly. Todd still didn't look thrilled at the prospect, and when the reason why hit John like a brick to the back of the head, he felt like an idiot for not seeing it sooner. “There's only one pod, isn't there?”

         “There is, but it will awaken you in time, and this ring's controls have not been upgraded.” John edged around the pedestal and its display until there was no more sun between him and Todd.

         “And you're gonna leave me here?” John asked, though he felt like he already knew the answer, and Todd as good as confirmed it by turning away and shutting off the display.

         “No, Sheppard. I will not leave.” He didn't sound sad, exactly, as far as John could read wraith expressions. More resigned.

         “Can't gate out?” Todd shook his head again.

         “There is not enough power for two trips and eight hundred years.”

         “So what are you gonna do?” At that, Todd did turn, his mouth a set line and his eyes grim.

         “I will die, and eventually my body, and the bodies of my family who died on this planet many years ago, will be consumed by the expanding sun.” There wasn't a whole lot you could say to that. Todd held John's gaze steadily, and at last John realized what had been bothering him.

        “Hey,” John asked, “can I see your hand?” Sure enough, when Todd held up his right hand there was no mark to show there ever had been a weird alien mouth there, and the pupils of his yellow eyes, narrowed in the clear lights of the control center, were round.

         “You did disappear before the recombinants were commonplace, did you not, and long before I was one myself.” That was putting it mildly. John wasn't sure he had the presence of mind to appropriately unpack all of that right now.

        “Huh. I guess that guy actually pulled it off.”

        “They did,” Todd corrected offhandedly.

         “Huh,” John said again, impressed despite himself. When he'd heard Ronon's… Friend…  Wanted to trade himself for Teyla, John had assumed all they were going to get out of the deal was Teyla, and _maybe_ a distracted Michael for a short time. The idea that Schuyler's unnerving optimism might spread to Michael, and actually get the little psycho to help, hadn't even really been on the table. And that wasn't even considering the question of what Todd's place in this was.

         “Hey, not that this isn't at least the second most glad I've been to see you, but why _you_? I assume it's not because the wraith took Atlantis, since you're trying to send me back… Apparently… I just… Feel like there's a piece I'm not seeing.” Todd chuckled and turned toward the conference room. After a moment, John followed, and found Todd perched on the long, dusty table there.

         “There are about forty-eight thousand missing pieces, yes. The largest one is that there is no real divide between wraith and human any longer. Or, I should say, there was very little when I went to sleep, and I can only assume there is even less now. Soldiers overwhelmingly chose the recombination, queens separated into their own faction and gradually died out, and many humans elected to receive gene therapy to communicate with their new cousins. Children were born. Grandchildren. The species folded back into one.” John slowly lowered himself into a chair and propped one boot, then the other, on the table beside Todd.

       “Huh,” was really the only thing he could think to bring to the conversation. “How did Earth take this?”

        “Not well, in the end. Your people were recalled, and many did choose to return. Our galaxy lost contact with yours, which is one reason this city has been allowed to fall into such disrepair.”

        “How did you know I'd be here?” At that, Todd grinned and waved a hand over the hologram emitter controls. What popped up in the center of the table kind of looked like McKay, if his hair went gray and the rest of him went goth. His eyes were maybe a lighter shade of brown, but his already-pale skin was definitely a little bluish, and maybe the most surprising thing was how comfortably he was pulling off the high-collared black ensemble he was wearing.

        “Hi Sheppard,” the hologram said, and he even _sounded_ a little wraith-echoy. John set his boots back down on the floor one at a time and leaned in, riveted and trying to decide of he was horrified or not. Rodney definitely looked cheerful. “If you're seeing this, it means Ronon is right and you're threatening our wraith buddy, which you shouldn't do, but more importantly, it means I'm right, and you're alive, and Radek owes me twenty… Well we don't use money anymore, but it means I won like six bets. Or I would if I was, you know, still alive. Which, at age fifty thousand, is pretty unlikely, even for… Well, one of us.

         “Anyway, other than making sure you don't kill whoever lives long enough to send you back to 2008, I would _also_ like you to know that I am the one who figured out how to track solar flares in the first place, and therefore am the first person you should thank when you get back, no matter what Todd says to the contrary.” Here Rodney paused, for the first time since he started speaking, and glanced off 'camera’ with a pointed look. Todd, when John glanced up, had his eyes closed, and was smiling like it hurt.

         “Okay, I need the wraith to leave the room now, time for the humans to talk. Well. Human and human-adjacent. So. I'll give you a minute.” In a surprising show of complacency, Todd slid wordlessly from the table in a puff of dust and left, closing the room off behind him. Just John and the Wraith of Rodney Yet to Come. “Just us? You're sure? Check if it's Schuyler, I think he has the best hearing, he might be eavesdropping.” John didn't move, feeling no less at sea than he had before the hologram had started talking. Probably significantly more so, come to think of it.

         “All right.” Rodney sighed and sat down, in a chair that seemed to appear for the purpose. “Here's the deal: Things turn out pretty great for us, in ways I'd never have dreamed of, but the path to get here has been… Rough, to say the least. I'm about four hundred years old now, and I still remember those early years as some of the worst. Worse even than the war with Earth, which was brief but sucked the whole time. At some point Michael and Schuyler fall off the radar, and by the time we figure out what's going on, Schuyler pretty much goes nuts trying to wipe out the Genii for… Well, reasons. Once we get Michael's help, the Hoffan virus is more or less toast, but we can't get him without Schuyler, and Schuyler was fairly cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs for a while there, so here's my big ask…” Rodney leaned forward, and John found himself mirroring the gesture, like it'd make a difference.

        “There's gonna be a crucial moment nobody knows what to do, and you don't know how to help, and Jennifer, Jennifer's going to take it as a personal failure, and you're going to need to call Todd. I'm pretty sure that's the piece we missed, because once he showed up, things just–” Rodney slashed his hand through the air “– _fwip_ . Into place. I feel like I shouldn't tell you too much in case you McFly this up, but you should know that the Pegasus Galaxy is shaping up to be just… A beautiful place right now, a real Federation utopia, and I think for that to happen we need all of them. Even Michael. So. Teyla can find Schuyler once they drop off the grid. Todd can help when things get impossible… What else…” Unseen or not, John flipped his hand in the intergalactic sign for _get on with it, Rodney._

        “Oh!” Rodney snapped his dark-nailed fingers and leaned back in his chair, looking typically pleased with himself. “Here's something else I bet would help. I know it sounds weird, but trust me. We were too late, but if Joh– Um, Teyla's baby, if Teyla's baby hasn't been born yet, then there should be time, and you need to go to M2S-445 and rescue Beckett. Trust me.” Rodney dropped his hands into his lap and grinned. His teeth weren't any sharper than John remembered from normal Rodney.

         “Okay, that's it. If you want science details, I'm sure whoever you get can explain them adequately. Apparently this array 'takes up a lot of power,’ so this appears to be my time. Good luck, I guess. See you soon? Or, I mean, I won't ever see you again, that sucks, but… Your me won't have a chance to miss you, I guess there's that to look forward to. Anyway–” Here the recording ended abruptly, and John looked over his shoulder to see Todd standing in one of the reopened panels, looking wistful.

         “As I recall, Jennifer cut him off there. He never did get any less long-winded.”

         “I could have sworn he told you not to listen in.” Todd shrugged, unconcerned.

         “I did not review the recording until he  and Jennifer had been dead for several thousand years.” John pushed back from the table and stood, turning to face Todd.

         “What happened to them?”

         “The same thing that happened to Lantea, and to the rest of my family. Time. I can still hear the song of my people in the galaxy, or something like them, but I know none of the voices in the chorus. I am as much a relic of the past as the city is.” It seemed like there was going to be a lot John didn't know how to take today.

         “This is kinda a lot to process. What did he mean, a war with Earth? I feel like maybe you glossed over that part.” Todd didn't seem bothered one way or the other, but for him John guessed it was ancient history.

         “It was brief. Colonel Carter's replacement was not a military man, and your military leadership did not trust or like him. When we put forth the option of hybridization to your people on Atlantis, Earth… Disapproved. First they recalled the officers, then the soldiers, and finally the scientists and diplomats, though by that time many of the scientists had chosen to stay and change.”

         “Like Rodney and Dr. Keller,”John assumed, from the recording.

         “And Radek, and Evan, and many others. Yes. Earth took this as a sign that they had been lost to 'the enemy,’ and attempted to retake the city by force from the Athosians and your own people who had stayed.” It was pretty safe to assume Rodney was the one who had taught Todd to use air quotes, and that was just one more atrocity John was going to have to prevent in the past. Present. Whatever.

         “I assume they didn't win.” Or should it be ‘we?’ Making that call sounded like John's worst nightmare, and he wasn't sure where he'd fall if it came down to him.

         “No. The Earth forces were neutralized and sent home, and then the ring's crystals were altered to prevent its opening to Earth again, which vastly reduced the need for a presence here. And so the city was allowed to wane with its planet.”

         “Huh.” John slipped through another of the conference room's vents and back into the control center, as the conference room shuttered silently behind them. “Hey, do you know what McKay meant by telling me to rescue Beckett? Is it another time travel thing?”

         “I have no idea. My apologies. As far as I know, he died some time before I came to live here.” John frowned down at the empty stargate, and the orange crack of sky though the window beyond.

         “Did you get to see it up and running, at least?” The city herself felt lonely with only the two of them here. It wasn't right. Hell, they were probably the last living creatures on the planet.

        “Yes, Sheppard. I lived to see Atlantis fly and come home again, lived through another rise and slow decline of a thousand years. Like me, it can rest having served its purpose to the fullest extent.” John wasn't sure he wanted to look at Todd just then, but the wraith mostly sounded peaceful.

        “Seems like a hell of a lot of time you wasted waiting for me.” With a quiet rustle of cloth, Todd joined John at the window overlooking the gate.

         “I returned here to wait and sleep twenty thousand years ago. There was nothing left for me in the galaxy. No more family that I recognized. This is the longest I have been awake for twenty millennia, and I will not regret those years, or that you are the last person I will speak to. I regret only that I will not be able to guide you back home myself.”

         “So you do like me,” John drawled. He turned to face Todd, and found the wraith smiling at him with the same unnerving warmth as when he had first awakened.

         “I like you very much, John Sheppard.” It took every ounce of his willpower not to flinch away as the tips of Todd's fingers tapped lightly over John's sternum. “The Gift is not given lightly, and my memory is as long as my life. Which, thanks to you, has been very long indeed.”

         “You're welcome?” It seemed for a minute like maybe there wasn't any getting out of this with one-liners, but Todd dropped his hand, shook his head and walked away laughing.

         John turned back to the window and rested his forehead on the glass. He hadn't known what to do with Todd since he met the guy, and this wasn't making anything simpler. It was the mix of lightness and sincerity that was getting to him. Maybe this was the real problem with getting to know aliens, that you started to think of them as just like you. Then again, he reflected, maybe the problem was that people stopped.

         It didn't help any when the alien was trying to eat you, of course.

         Or vice versa.

         “Sheppard.” Fifty thousand years, and Todd still said his name the same way, like he was rolling it around in his mouth and liked the taste. John unstuck his forehead from the future glass and went back to the office-turned-pod-room, where Todd was waiting for him.

         “It is ready,” Todd said, and John was surprised to feel the tiniest bit sad about it. As usual, he tried to ignore the feeling, and climbed into the pod instead.

         “Any last thoughts? Now's your chance.” Todd stared back at him, half-wraith eyes unreadable. Moving slow as the sun outside, Todd braced a hand on the pod door and leaned in, turning at the last moment to brush his thin lips over John's cheek. His skin was warmer than John had expected, and up close he didn't smell of anything in particular. Salt, a little copper.

         “Please trust me, Sheppard,” Todd whispered in his ear and then drew back out of the pod, leaving John's skin buzzing slightly in his wake. John waited, but that was apparently all there was, as the doors slid shut on Todd's half-human eyes and very human smile.

         Then John slept, for a very long time, though it didn't feel like much more than a long, slow blink of his eyes before the door was cracking open again.

         “Did you forget,” he began, only to trail off as he realized he was alone. Well and truly, completely alone.

         Still, John thumbed his P90 as he stepped out of the stasis pod, though all he was greeted by were the lights flickering reluctantly to life again. The control room didn't seem to have changed any since Todd had put John to sleep. John could have guessed, with no other living things on the planet, it wouldn't have. He stretched out a hand to the DHD, only to be seized with a sudden morbid curiosity.

          John pulled his hand back and turned in a slow circle, but no more bones jumped out at him than the first time he'd come to an abandoned Atlantis. He started toward the closed-off conference room, then stopped short as he remembered what Todd had said to him the first disastrous time they'd met, after they'd escaped the Genii and laid on their backs in the grass, staring up at the night sky that neither had let himself fully believe he was going to see again.

        Sure enough, John found Todd on the balcony, sitting cross-legged with his face upturned toward the stars he'd loved. Relentless sunlight and the equally relentless desert heat had left Todd mummified, his taut and flaking skin the same color as his hair. Even his black clothing had faded to a neutral gray. John knew what a body left in the desert looked like, and knew why, but he still couldn't help but imagine the dry lips pulled tight over Todd's sharp teeth were smiling, just a little.

         John turned away before he could think too long about how they had felt, and began his long, brief journey back home.

**Author's Note:**

> Character death: It's been 48,000 years, so everyone is dead, but it's implied they mostly died peacefully of incredibly old age. The one remaining character dies offscreen, and also peacefully, though there are some dead body descriptions. I'd tag it as more melancholy than angsty. 
> 
> They sure did a lot of super hasty exposition toward the end of the show, huh? I would feel bad but I remembered that 100% of the canon ep is exposition that literally does not matter. So much telling. 
> 
> Also, here's a fun couple of facts that I haven't decided on abusing or not yet: Sheppard bits are going to be named after Johnny Cash lyrics, and Johnny Cash has a song called "That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine." Just putting that out into the world.


End file.
